The Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, has done less than justice to his wonted perspicacity by dismissing as “human error” and of little consequence the inclusion of the name of terror accused Wazhul Kamar Khan in the list of the 50 most wanted fugitives by India given to Pakistan in March 2011.

In matters impacting not only international relations and reputation, but also domestic issues being handled by the Government, it is incumbent on the highest officials of the Ministry/Department concerned to take the utmost care to make sure that every official documentation prepared under its auspices is double-checked and cross-checked a number of times for accuracy.

I remember in the days when Lal Bahadur Shastri, Gulzarilal Nanda and Y.B.Chavan were Home Ministers, officials were taken to task for what would nowadays be regarded as trivial omissions, and one official was promptly reverted to his cadre in disgrace for giving a wrong total in answer to an unstarred question in Parliament, even though it could have been easily corrected with the Speaker's permission.

It is impossible to exaggerate the vital importance of observing the most stringent precautions against mistakes and errors occurring in documents on sensitive security issues and meant for foreign Governments.

Taking serious lapses lightly will only result in the plummeting of standards all round.

All the more so, when Mr Chidambaram knows that this is not the first time that the bureaucratic leadership of the Home Ministry had been found wanting in dealings with Pakistan on 26/11.

In the list of DNA reports of 10 terrorists given to Pakistan on March 13, 2009, two DNA reports were of the same person.

The dossier was supposed to have enclosed the statement of Mohammed Ajmal Amir ‘Kasab', but it was left out due to what was claimed to be “a clerical error”.

Grave omission

This is what I wrote in my column on December 26, 2009: “The 26/11 Mumbai carnage itself is a monumental example of the obvious failure at the level of the Home Secretary and the National Security Adviser of any effort to collate, digest and draw pointed conclusions from all the information and intelligence available to them and set in motion forthwith the necessary pre-emptive and countervailing actions at the Central and State levels.

“This grave omission was compounded by the failure to enforce accountability to the people's satisfaction. Those who should have paid for their lackadaisical performance at the most critical and dangerous moment in the country's recent history went scot-free and continued to rule the roost.

“To make matters worse, in the matter of preparation of the dossiers on the Pakistani complicity in 26/11 horror, because of the silly errors resulting from the Home Ministry officials' want of care and thoroughness, the Government had to suffer the embarrassment of Pakistan throwing them back at it several times.”

Referring to the controversy over the sloppy wording of the Sharm-el-Sheikh joint statement by the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan, I had written in this column on October 1, 2009: “….one is mystified by the Foreign Secretary, Mr Shivshankar Menon, confessing at a meeting of MPs that ‘one can argue that the drafting (of the Statement) was not proper'.

“Does this mean that the top foreign service mandarin absolves himself and those of his colleagues in attendance at Sharm-el-Sheikh of all responsibility for the drafting?...”

I had gone on to say: “Too many instances of top administrative brass letting down the Government with a lackadaisical approach to their duties and continuing in their chairs without being sacked then and there have been surfacing.

If this deterioration in the calibre of officials holding top posts and the quality of performance on the part of the permanent civil service is not addressed with the seriousness it deserves, the Government will have only itself to blame if it is forced to face more such embarrassments.”

I hope my present warning at least will not fall on deaf ears.

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